From Mordor to the Strongholds
by coreyjotunn
Summary: Tarbûrz the Black Uruk of Mordor was marching to his first true battle when the Eye fell. While waiting for his judgement, he was stolen by a foreign God who dragged him to another world, to bring fresh blood to his people. Rated M for foul language and sexual situations in later chapters.


The sky screamed fire and the sun burned. The Master's voice echoed through his head, ringing and tearing and burning. He screamed in pain, dropping his banner and throwing his head back, the spiked black metal of his helm crashing to the ground. The noise of it was drowned out by the screams that tore from the throats of a hundred more of his kin, the great black Uruks of Mordor. Some went insane, turning on their fellows and rending their flesh with steel, or teeth and claws for those that had forgotten their weapons in the madness. What had happened? In a pain filled moment, he looked to the great tower, the symbol of his Masters power and what he had always looked to. It was falling! The Great Eye was extinguished, the Nazgul bearing their Wraith Riders to the ground as they screamed their fear sounds. Tarbûrz screamed in anger and pain, his head still ripping apart and his heart filling with something he had never experienced. A sick filling, like his legion could finally fall to defeat. They were the best, the greatest warriors of the Master. The Black Uruks of the Tower had never felt fear, such a foreign concept to them that Tarbûrz had no name for it. But he felt it. He roared again as another wave of pain rolled through his mind, the rocks of the mountain pass they marched in falling in Sauron's death throes, signifying death for them all. The pain was finally ended when black stone crashed down on him and he could feel no more.

Life, such as it was, flashed by as if Tarbûrz could see it all again. The warrens, were the great orcess, heavy handed matrons bred new warriors for the great legion. He had come from such a place. The black pits were orclings clashed in mock battles that quickly turned real as they aged. The fiercest and the strongest were not always raged quickly. Instead, those that could be fierce and strong, but had coupled it with cruel intellect and cunning, those were the ones that rose quickly from the warrens to the barracks. Tarbûrz had been such an orcling. Young and weak at first, he had quickly learned that the bigger orclings, the ones that fought alone for the glory and chance, were fools. Instead, he had gathered others like him, smaller and weak, and armed them with the loose rocks and old bones of the warren floors and attacked the larger ones that would harm his small tribe. Small and weak, in great numbers, they could overcome the large and strong and claim victory. He could still remember the taste of raw orc flesh from one such battle. The elders, the warren masters and wounded veterans that chose the new ranks, would sometimes allow a battle to go to such a conclusion. He had seen many, and once again laughed at the folly of the others. They kept the most meat for themselves, only to let it spoil before giving it to others. All of his little gang had received the meat of the kills, the shares going equally. A hungry orcling was a weak orcling, and the young were already weak enough. Soon enough, the warrens rang with the cries of weeping mothers, gnashing their teeth in rage that their whelps would not go on to serve the Shadow. But they did, in a small way. They fed the bellies of his warriors. What folly to think themselves great warriors, just skinny black orclings that were able to overwhelm untrained others and win the fight against them.

Soon enough, the whispers reached the elders that chose those who would train. Whispers of the gang and what their leader was like. And he was chosen. The youngest to ever have that honour. His mother had worn the pride like a robe that the other breeders could not touch. His gang had fallen into ruin soon after he left, but Tarbûrz did not care. He had been chosen to become a warrior. The raw flesh of his enemies had helped him fill out, put on muscle, and he was tall for his age. He grew to be even taller. It was whispered that they had finally done it. They had bred the warrior they needed, if they could only breed more like him. He was the warrior, the soldier, the stock from which they would bred the newest legion for the Flaming Eye. If Tarbûrz could be trained to what they wanted him to be, what they needed in a soldier, then he would become a great leader in their legions. But all that was gone now. The eye had fallen. The first true battle Tarbûrz would march to, to prove himself to his people, and it had not even been joined before the master had fallen and the world as Tarbûrz knew it had ended. The blackness had crushed him. Now he was floating in the darkness, waiting for his judgement.

"Go! You have no power here!"  
"I won't be long. I need it, to inject my people with new life. New blood. A new soul to keep them going."

"You will not have him, Malacath! He is of Morgoth's design. Go back to your own plane of excistence, and leave the creature be."

A dark and forbidding chuckle sounded through the blackness, and pins and needles of fire drilled into Tarbûrz's flesh. He felt like he was being dragged on a rack, dragged by horses, back into the world of life. He could feel sunshine again, warming his face. But there was no ash smell, no smell of the burning earth noise and smell. But there was pain there. Just like the old master, but like it was leaving and being replaced with something... less evil and more cruel. Less truthful and more trustworthy with it's oaths. Something that looked and felt like him, not alien like the Master had always been.

"Too late. This orc will bring great glory to the Orsimer. And I will not return him. Morgoth can come for him and suffer. Tarbûrz the Mad is mine now. And I will protect him with the blood and heart of my people and the spirit of the Orsimer while he is still needed."

Tarbûrz felt fear. What did that mean for when he was no longer needed?


End file.
